Moonrise
by Unique Sandwich
Summary: Utena brings Anthy to the dueling arena to find truth there.


**Moonrise**  
by Kelsey  
  
Disclaimer: Me no own Utena. You no sue me. :P  
  
Warnings: Creepiness!  
  
Notes: Done for a challenge on temps_mort with the requirement that the line "May I have this dance?" be included. Utena didn't want me to use her name in the fic, for some reason, so there may be some slight confusion about who "she" refers to sometimes. My muses give me strange instructions.  
  
--  
  
Somehow, she knew that she had to bring Anthy to the dueling arena.  
  
It didn't burst upon her in a hot splash of epiphany; the realization came together like a stained glass window, piece by delicate piece. The light finally poured through the picture to color her thoughts in the middle of serving tea. She did not see the cup as it fell to the ground and shattered, nor hear Anthy move to clean it up. When she recalled herself, she clapped her hands together with a soft, reverential exclamation of, "Oh!"  
  
Anthy looked up, curious. "Utena-sama?"  
  
Her hand closed around her wrist, drawing her up and away from the floor. Anthy's cleaning rag drifted limply to the floor and Utena smiled and said, "Let's go."  
  
Moonlight streamed down onto the graceful buildings of Ohtori Academy, moonlight so bright and thick she could almost taste it in her mouth, the clean cold opposite of sunshiny maple syrup. Anthy followed behind her, ever-obedient, and that obedience troubled her. This Himemiya girl, did she have any needs or wants of her own? She believed with all her heart that Anthy needed a friend, someone to eat popcorn with at midnight, but did Anthy want this? Or was she just playing the good Rose Bride and bowing to her fiancee's wish? What did she want?  
  
Their feet tapped steady beats up the long, spiralling staircase, and she noted that Anthy made no objection to this. After the bizarre incident with Saionji, she'd been a little leery of doing this, but her intuition spoke with such power, and as long as Anthy had no problem with it...  
  
She smelled roses.  
  
"Is there something you wish of the Rose Bride, Utena-sama?" Anthy asked, the folds of her red gown unfolding around her like flower petals.  
  
How to put it into words, this electrifying knowledge that the dueling arena needed to lose a little of its mystique, its grandeur, its dazzling immortality? They both needed this, but Anthy especially. If she took the Bride off the altar, the prince off his pedestal, would they be revealed as human as she? She fumbled around the edges of understanding, never quite able to grasp it for very long before it slipped through the spaces between her fingers. She knew that she needed to make Anthy human in this most inhuman of places, where swords crashed and princes fell. And that castle! That enchanted, lonely castle, dwelling of gods and angels! Just this once, she wanted the arena to mean something different, something not conjured up from a welter of fairy tales all swirled together.  
  
She made a motion and Anthy bent backwards over her extended arm, and the stars dimmed as a thousand pinpricks of lightning gathered needle-sharp on her chest. The Sword of Dios protruded from Anthy's chest, and she grasped the hilt with one hand made noble and pulled it free, feeling the slender form in her arm grow even lighter, as if she could soar unrestrained to that castle glinting above, eclipsing the moon.  
  
Not now.  
  
"There is no one to duel, Utena-sama," Anthy observed, voice soft.  
  
"I need another sword, please, Himemiya."  
  
Anthy nodded once, light glinting off of her glasses so that she couldn't see her eyes, and took another sword from the folds of her skirt, handing it to her. She shivered--where had that come from, anyway?--as it gleamed soft, deadly gray.  
  
As the rest of the image came clear to her, she could have laughed at its absurdity. Preposterous. Ridiculous. But still, she pressed a hand over the sweet white rose at her breast and requested, "Fight me."  
  
Anthy's eyes widened, just a miniscule amount. "Utena-sama?"  
  
Her hands trembled as she pressed the plain sword into Anthy's slack hands. Was she insane? What was she doing? Why was she doing this?  
  
'Because it feels like the right thing' wasn't much of a justification.  
  
"Fight me. If you knock this rose off my chest, you win. You win your freedom. You don't have to play this stupid fencing game anymore. But you have to win because you want to. You have to want it for yourself, Himemiya."  
  
"Utena-sama..." Anthy looked down at the sword, so strange in her small graceful hands. She looked lost, adrift in her inability to understand the concept, for when did a princess ever rescue herself? When did a witch ever have the opportunity to redeem (reclaim) herself?  
  
Anthy nodded once, and suddenly the sword belonged in her hand, despite the long red dress, despite everything. She bowed once from the waist, swordless hand making an elegant sweep before her, and asked, "Very well, Utena-sama. May I have this dance?"  
  
She lunged forward, with her usual reckless agility. The usual buzzing came to her ears, the cotton white noise that came during every duel, and she fended off Anthy with careless ease and pressed forward, following through with the advantage. The lingering taste of moonlight faded and electricity crackled over her tongue and between her lips, like kissing a stormcloud.  
  
Anthy flowed--there wasn't another word for it--just out of her reach with one smooth glide, as if, hidden beneath her dress, her feet hovered above the ground. Sparks flew as their swords crashed together, the painful wail of metal against metal, screaming through the velvet night. Her eyes widened as Anthy began to push her back, eyes hard and yet paradoxically softened from their emerald hardness by some faint flickering of feeling.  
  
The Sword of Dios fell to the ground with a clang like a thousand great brass bells.  
  
She swallowed once, feeling the icy point of the sword prick at her throat like a rose thorn. Anthy's eyes were deep dark green behind her glasses, and she felt one long measuring look slide over her, peeling away layers of skin, and she shrank from that gaze, that merciless piercing of her soul's armor. She closed her eyes.  
  
The sword faded from her neck, vanished as quickly and completely as a nightmare after waking. Her eyes opened, disbelieving, and she looked into eyes gone blank and mild again. Turning so that Anthy would not see her, she wiped at the single tear at the corner of her eyes. What... was that?  
  
Anthy's voice, all gentleness, made her start. "You ordered me to win only if I wanted to, Utena-sama. Your instructions were quite explicit on that matter."  
  
Her mouth opened to ask, Why, why? How can you defeat me with one move and then refuse to strike the final blow? What does that mean, Himemiya?  
  
Then she closed her mouth at the memory of that stare, that single instant in which she'd glimpsed what was hidden in the Rose Bride. It was enough. She'd done what she set out to do. It was enough.  
  
Anthy beckoned once, face wearing a smile. "Shall we go, Utena-sama?"  
  
  
  
  



End file.
